Parents of 15 year-old girl say she was missing for a month, blame area charter school

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - On May 6th, Brenda and Michael Swafford say their 15-year-old daughter was allowed to walk out of Fallbrook College Preparatory Academy after telling the nurse she didn’t feel well.

“You just don’t let a kid get in anybody’s car,” said Michael Swafford.

After their daughter was missing from the school for over two hours the couple says the school called them.

“They never called the police so I had to do it,” Brenda Swafford said.

“We came up here and the nurse she knew she did wrong cause she was crying,” said the girl’s father.

The Swafford’s would spend the next month not knowing where their teenage daughter was or what she was doing.

“A whole month,” the girl’s mother said. “Stress, crying worried couldn’t eat.”

“We were trying every day to do whatever we could do to locate her,” Michael Swafford said.

After searching for a month Houston police located the girl in Galveston.

“The young girl admitted to me she was in a place where they were using drugs a lot of sex was taking place and drug use and criminal activity,” said community activist Quanell X.

The parents and Quanell X say if the school followed its own procedures the girl would not have been missing for a month.

“If you have policies and procedures in writing please make sure you don’t compromise or go away from those policies and procedures when it concerns the safety and security of students,” the community activist said.

We went in to the building to get the charter school’s side of the story but two men there told us that’s not possible because the school no longer exists.    

The Texas Education Agency says the school had to stop operating by June 30th.

“I don’t want nobody else to have to go through this,” Michael Swafford said.

The TEA says it revoked Fallbrook’s charter because the school had an unacceptable academic rating in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

According to the TEA Fallbrook also failed to meet its financial accountability requirements in 2013 and 2014.